Photographs purportedly showing Chinese politicians at a wife-swapping party
have triggered an online storm.

Earlier this month a collection of compromising images – featuring three naked men and two women – were posted on the internet alongside claims that two of the men were "top officials" from Lujiang county in Anhui province.

Local propaganda chiefs rejected the allegations as "malicious slander" and vowed to punish those behind the online rumours after it emerged that the photographs had been taken in a different region, five years earlier.

A headline in the People's Daily newspaper read: "Naked guy is not our Party chief".

But on Weibo, China's hugely popular answer to Twitter, the damage had already been done.

"The Lujiang incident is just a microcosm of China's corrupted society," wrote one user, under the name 'Rillakumabear'.

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"That's Chinese government officials for you – and we have many, many [of them]," a user called 'Guiyang netizen' wrote on the Netease social media website. "Send them to Japan!"

The state-run Global Times newspaper said the allegations of "group licentiousness" had released pent up frustration at China's political leaders and "the lives of luxury and sin that [some believe] many officials secretly enjoy." "Such activities are being pointed to as evidence for the decaying morality of government officials," the newspaper added.

"There is a simmering hatred for officials, and some undisciplined officials have obviously undermined the image of the whole group," Ren Jianming, a professor from Tsinghua University, told the newspaper.

In a speech published earlier this month China's president-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, hinted at widespread public dissatisfaction with politicians who pursued personal gain and "individual pleasure".

Mr Xi, who is currently China's vice-president, hit out at "pleasure-seeking" officials who had fallen into an "abyss of luxury and corruption".

On Tuesday the Global Times offered its own words of caution, pointing out that "all sexual activities between three or more people" were illegal in China.